The 73rd Annual Illinois State BPA Annual Membership Meeting was held at the Marriott Hotel & Convention Center in Normal, Illinois, November 6 & 7. While we appreciated all the member centers that were in attendance, we also understand that not everyone is able to attend, so below is a quick recap of the meeting agenda.

Samuel Guy of USBC kicked things off the morning education program discussing USBC’s new Lane Certification Program that will begin in 2023. Samuel brought the new machine USBC inspectors will be using when certifying a center’s lanes. He told the audience of 50 people that within the next three years a USBC inspector will be coming to their center to inspect their lanes. USBC will notify centers with at least 90 days’ notice when they will be scheduling their center to inspect. Samuel said the time for inspecting the lanes will move a lot faster than in the past and inspectors can schedule at time prior to a center’s open time or after they close so it doesn’t interrupt business. There are four tiers – Gold, Silver, Bronze and Standard. A Gold rating is good for three years, a Silver is good for two years and Bronze is good for one year before the lanes need inspecting again. If a center receives a standard rating, they will have up to three years to improve their rating. If they receive a standard rating again, they will have to be inspected every year until they make it to one of the three above tiers.

Kelly Bednar of the BPAA Education Team presented two seminars – The Bigger Bottom Line and Hiring, Training and Recruiting Employees. Both seminars were well received by the 40 plus members in attendance and in his first seminar, Kelly showed the members attending several ways they can increase their revenue from “behind the foul line” in their centers. In his second seminar, Bednar taught ways to help centers hire new employees, retain their current employees, along with ways their current employees can help recruit new employees, as staffing major issue currently facing proprietors.

BPAA Executive Director Frank DeSocio provided a BPAA Industry Update to the Illinois members, where he showed a slide recognizing Illinois State BPA for being up four new member centers so far in 2022, the second highest in the nation among the 39 active state associations. DeSocio encouraged members to attend next year’s BPAA Summit in Savannah, GA in January and International Bowl Expo in Orlando, FL in June.

The ISBPA introduced Michael Best Strategies as the new ISBPA lobbyist starting officially on December 1. MBS is based headquartered in Wisconsin with other two offices including Chicago and Washington, DC. For the past several years they have been the national lobbyist group of the BPAA in Arlington, TX. This fall BPAA announced a $10,000 grant for state associations that have lobbyists in their state. ISBPA applied and was awarded with the $10,000 grant. This will help ISBPA save on lobbyist fees next year.